The cruelty of denial

One of the qualities of nationalist extremists is the anxious
denial of their own group's historic crimes. As soon as the
cultural warriors of the right embraced Keith Windschuttle, perhaps
for the first time in our history an authentic version of
Australian denialism began to emerge.

One branch of this denialism concerns the question of what
Australians have come to call the "stolen generations", the policy
and practice of removing mixed descent Aborigines from their
mothers, families and cultures between 1900 and 1950 when the
thinking was unambiguously racist, and between 1950 and 1970 when
racist thinking and welfare considerations became intertwined.

The most extreme exponent of this branch of denialism is the
Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt. Despite the fact that an
Australian Bureau of Statistics survey reveals that between 1900
and 1970, 20,000 to 25,000 indigenous children were separated from
their natural families; despite the fact that a mountain of
documentary evidence and eyewitness testimony exists that reveal
the cruelty and the racist motivations of the policy; despite the
fact that even the Howard Government has funded a monument to the
stolen generations - in column after column, Bolt has described the
question of the stolen generations as a "preposterous and obscene"
myth, a "pride murdering fantasy", a "libel on our past".

Bolt has written that there was no policy in any state or
territory at any time for the systematic removal of "half-caste"
children. This is blatantly wrong. One example must suffice. In
1934, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior in Canberra
outlined government practice in the Northern Territory like this:
"It is the policy to collect all half-castes from the native camps
at an early age and transfer them to the Government Institutions at
Darwin and Alice Springs." What does Bolt think this means?

Bolt has often written in a way that suggests that there is not
one example of a child seized from a loving mother by force. Again,
this is plainly wrong. In October 1919 the tough police inspector
at Broome complained to the Chief Protector of Aborigines in
Western Australia, A. O. Neville: "This seizing and removing of
children is obnoxious to the police. No neglect has been shown by
the mothers. The children have the natural love for the mother."
Neville responded thus: "If the duty of bringing in half-caste
children is obnoxious to the Police, it is strange that the
Department has not previously been advised of this, in view of the
hundreds of cases that have had attention." What does Bolt think
this exchange means?

Bolt also writes as if in the seizure of the children no racism
was involved. If the thousands of children were taken for welfare
reasons, to save them from neglect, why is there no example of the
removal of a "full-blood" child? Was it not racist when a Protector
in the Kimberleys spoke about Aborigines as if they were animals:
"I would not hesitate to separate any half-caste from its
Aboriginal mother. They soon forget their offspring." And was it
not racist when the Commonwealth Government, in 1933, decided that
half-castes should be removed so that their "colour" could be "bred
out"?

Most denialists have at least an awareness of the relevant
historical evidence. Their tactic is to distort and twist. This is
not the case with Bolt. He is unacquainted with archival evidence,
most stolen generations memoirs, the scholarly monographs, and the
publicly available oral history interviews. But his indifference to
evidence is even deeper than this. Bolt has dismissed the testimony
of stolen children as "lurid anecdotes". In our recent debate at
The Age Melbourne Writers' Festival he described documents
as "bits of paper". It is from eyewitness testimony and from
documents that all history is written. There is no other way. By
discounting all such material, Bolt's form of denialism is more
absurd, more resistant to reason, than that of Windschuttle. Even
David Irving does not call documents "bits of paper".

For the past five years I have been trying to engage Andrew Bolt
in debate. In 2001, he agreed and then pulled out. This year, after
he argued that the "left" feared debate with the "right", I renewed
the invitation.

Trying to get Andrew Bolt to agree to a debate was surreal.
Before being willing to debate me Bolt demanded first either "ten"
or "one hundred" or even "a few hundred" names of stolen children.
I asked him for his definition of a stolen child. He refused to
reply. I asked him who was to determine whether or not I had
satisfied his pre-condition. Again he refused to reply. Eventually,
I sent him some 250 names. After a silence, Bolt agreed to the
debate.

Bolt has a Herald Sun blog-site. He appealed on it for
help in discrediting my first 12 names. There was no mention of the
other 230-plus. Bolt presented the results of his research
assistants at last Sunday's debate. The omissions and distortions
took my breath away.

One of my names, Margaret Tucker, was raised by a loving mother,
who also had to work, and by a completely devoted uncle and aunt.
In her wonderful autobiography she reveals that she was with her
mother when she was seized. Her mother was so distraught that she
was discovered by the uncle and aunt lying in the bush "moaning and
crying" like "an animal in pain". Here is Bolt's version:
Margaret's mother "had gone to Sydney and some auntie was looking
after her-sort of".

Another name was John Moriarty, a much-loved Northern Territory
child of mixed descent whose mother was so frightened that he would
be stolen that she went to foreign country, Roper River, so he
could go to school. One day when she came to pick him up, John was
gone. He had been sent in a truck and in a state of high terror
with other children to the notorious Alice Springs half-caste
institution, the Bungalow. Consider Bolt's account. "He was sent
south to go to a boarding school with, he says, aunties and uncles.
Stolen? Or sent away?" Every word is invention. In each case he
discussed on Sunday, Bolt's distortions were of a similar kind. He
has never mentioned the other 230 names.

Historical denialism is a morally terrible matter. By refusing
to acknowledge the suffering of the victims it becomes for them and
their families a second sickening blow, a revival of the original
offence.

Because I want citizens to discover what Bolt has done, before
the debate I prepared a 46,000-word documentary collection on
"half-caste" child removal. No one could read this collection
without understanding how widespread, cruel and racist the policy
and practice was. The collection is available on the website of
The Monthly magazine. I handed Bolt a copy on Sunday. If
Bolt, without taking this evidence into account, continues to claim
that the stolen generations is a myth, the nature of his journalism
will be plain.

Robert Manne is professor of politics at La Trobe
University.

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